Turkic and Hunnic expansions

Tracing the origin and expansion of the Turkic and Hunnic confederations, by Flegontov et al.

Turkic-speaking populations, now spread over a vast area in Asia, are highly heterogeneous genetically. The first confederation unequivocally attributed to them was established by the Göktürks in the 6th c. CE. Notwithstanding written resources from neighboring sedentary societies such as Chinese, Persian, Indian and Eastern Roman, earlier history of the Turkic speakers remains debatable, including their potential connections to the Xiongnu and Huns, which dominated the Eurasian steppe in the first half of the 1st millennium CE. To answer these questions, we co-analyzed newly generated human genome-wide data from Central Asia (the 1240K panel), spanning the period from ca. 3000 to 500 YBP, and the data published by de Barros Damgaard et al. (137 ancient human genomes from across the Eurasian steppes, Nature, 2018). Firstly, we generated a PCA projection to understand genetic affinities of ancient individuals with respect to present-day Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Uralic, and Yeniseian-speaking groups. Secondly, we modeled hundreds of present-day and few ancient Turkic individuals using the qpAdm tool, testing various modern/ancient Siberian and ancient West Eurasian proxies for ancestry sources.

A majority of Turkic speakers in Central Asia, Siberia and further to the west share the same ancestry profile, being a mixture of Tungusic or Mongolic speakers and genetically West Eurasian populations of Central Asia in the early 1st millennium CE. The latter are themselves modelled as a mixture of Iron Age nomads (western Scythians or Sarmatians) and ancient Caucasians or Iranian farmers. For some Turkic groups in the Urals and the Altai regions and in the Volga basin, a different admixture model fits the data: the same West Eurasian source + Uralic- or Yeniseian-speaking Siberians. Thus, we have revealed an admixture cline between Scythians and the Iranian farmer genetic cluster, and two further clines connecting the former cline to distinct ancestry sources in Siberia. Interestingly, few Wusun-period individuals harbor substantial Uralic/Yeniseian-related Siberian ancestry, in contrast to preceding Scythians and later Turkic groups characterized by the Tungusic/Mongolic-related ancestry. It remains to be elucidated whether this genetic influx reflects contacts with the Xiongnu confederacy. We are currently assembling a collection of samples across the Eurasian steppe for a detailed genetic investigation of the Hunnic confederacies.

Three distinct East/West Eurasian clines across the continent with some interesting linguistic correlates, as earlier reported by Jeong et al. (2018). Alexander M. Kim.Very important observation with implication of population turnover is that pre-Turkic Inner Eurasian populations’ Siberian ancestry appears predominantly “Uralic-Yeniseian” in contrast to later dominance of “Tungusic-Mongolic” sort (which does sporadically occur earlier). Alexander M. Kim

Flegontov: Present day Turkic speakers fall into two clusters of admixture patterns (Uralic/Yenisean and Tungussic/Mngolic) based on genomic data with ancient Turks belonging almost exclusively to the first cluster. #ISBA8

New interesting information on the gradual arrival of the “Uralic-Yeniseian” (Siberian) ancestry in eastern Europe with Iranian and Turkic-speaking peoples. We already knew that Siberian ancestry shows no original relationship with Uralic-speaking peoples, so to keep finding groups who expanded this ancestry eastwards in North Eurasia should be no surprise for anyone at this point.

Central Asia and Indo-Iranian

The session The Genomic Formation of South and Central Asia, by David Reich, on the recent paper by Narasimhan et al. (2018).

One important upside of dense genomic sampling at single localities – greater visibility of outliers and better constraints on particular incoming ancestries’ arrival times. Gonur Tepe as a great case study of this. Alexander M. Kim– Tale of three clines, with clear indication that “Indus Periphery” samples drawn from an already-cosmopolitan and heterogeneous world of variable ASI & Iranian ancestry. (I know how some people like to pore over these pictures – so note red dots = just dummy data for illustration.)
– Some more certainty about primary window of steppe ancestry injection into S. Asia: 2000-1500 BC Alexander M. Kim

British Isles

Ancient DNA and the peopling of the British Isles – pattern and process of the Neolithic transition, by Brace et al.

Over recent years, DNA projects on ancient humans have flourished and large genomic-scale datasets have been generated from across the globe. Here, the focus will be on the British Isles and applying aDNA to address the relative roles of migration, admixture and acculturation, with a specific focus on the transition from a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer society to the Neolithic and farming. Neolithic cultures first appear in Britain ca. 6000 years ago (kBP), a millennium after they appear in adjacent areas of northwestern continental Europe. However, in Britain, at the margins of the expansion the pattern and process of the British Neolithic transition remains unclear. To examine this we present genome-wide data from British Mesolithic and Neolithic individuals spanning the Neolithic transition. These data indicate population continuity through the British Mesolithic but discontinuity after the Neolithic transition, c.6000 BP. These results provide overwhelming support for agriculture being introduced to Britain primarily by incoming continental farmers, with surprisingly little evidence for local admixture. We find genetic affinity between British and Iberian Neolithic populations indicating that British Neolithic people derived much of their ancestry from Anatolian farmers who originally followed the Mediterranean route of dispersal and likely entered Britain from northwestern mainland Europe.

MN Atlantic / Megalithic cultures

Genomics of Middle Neolithic farmers at the fringe of Europe, by Sánchez Quinto et al.

Agriculture emerged in the Fertile Crescent around 11,000 years before present (BP) and then spread, reaching central Europe some 7,500 years ago (ya.) and eventually Scandinavia by 6,000 ya. Recent paleogenomic studies have shown that the spread of agriculture from the Fertile Crescent into Europe was due mainly to a demic process. Such event reshaped the genetic makeup of European populations since incoming farmers displaced and admixed with local hunter-gatherers. The Middle Neolithic period in Europe is characterized by such interaction, and this is a time where a resurgence of hunter-gatherer ancestry has been documented. While most research has been focused on the genetic origin and admixture dynamics with hunter-gatherers of farmers from Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, and Anatolia, data from farmers at the North-Western edges of Europe remains scarce. Here, we investigate genetic data from the Middle Neolithic from Ireland, Scotland, and Scandinavia and compare it to genomic data from hunter-gatherers, Early and Middle Neolithic farmers across Europe. We note affinities between the British Isles and Iberia, confirming previous reports. However, we add on to this subject by suggesting a regional origin for the Iberian farmers that putatively migrated to the British Isles. Moreover, we note some indications of particular interactions between Middle Neolithic Farmers of the British Isles and Scandinavia. Finally, our data together with that of previous publications allow us to achieve a better understanding of the interactions between farmers and hunter-gatherers at the northwestern fringe of Europe.

Central European Bronze Age

Ancient genomes from the Lech Valley, Bavaria, suggest socially stratified households in the European Bronze Age, by Mittnik et al.

Archaeogenetic research has so far focused on supra-regional and long-term genetic developments in Central Europe, especially during the third millennium BC. However, detailed high-resolution studies of population dynamics in a microregional context can provide valuable insights into the social structure of prehistoric societies and the modes of cultural transition.

Here, we present the genomic analysis of 102 individuals from the Lech valley in southern Bavaria, Germany, which offers ideal conditions for such a study. Several burial sites containing rich archaeological material were directly dated to the second half of the 3rd and first half of the 2nd millennium BCE and were associated with the Final Neolithic Bell Beaker Complex and the Early and Middle Bronze Age. Strontium isotope data show that the inhabitants followed a strictly patrilocal residential system. We demonstrate the impact of the population movement that originated in the Pontic-Caspian steppe in the 3rd millennium BCE and subsequent local developments. Utilising relatedness inference methods developed for low-coverage modern DNA we reconstruct farmstead related pedigrees and find a strong association between relatedness and grave goods suggesting that social status is passed down within families. The co-presence of biologically related and unrelated individuals in every farmstead implies a socially stratified complex household in the Central European Bronze Age.

Alissa Mittnik of @MPI_SHH with a talk that heralds a new era of studying archaeological sites: using high resolution ancient DNA to reconstruct relatedness patterns—her results reveal patrilocality in Late Neolithic and Bronze Age Central Europe #isba8

UPDATES

Russian Far East populations

Russian Far East is not only a remote area of Eurasia but also a link of the chain of Pacific coast regions, spanning from East Asia to Americas, and many prehistoric migrations are known along this chain. The Russian Far East is populated by numerous indigenous groups, speaking Tungusic, Turkic, Chukotko-Kamchatka, Eskimo-Aleut, and isolated languages. This linguistic and geographic variation opens question about the patterns of genetic variation in the region, which was significantly undersampled and received minor attention in the genetic literature to date. To fill in this gap we sampled Aleuts, Evenks, Evens, Itelmens, Kamchadals, Koryaks, Nanais, Negidals, Nivkhs, Orochi, Udegeis, Ulchi, and Yakuts. We also collected the demographic information of local populations, took physical anthropological photos, and measured the skin color. The photos resulted in the “synthetic portraits” of many studied groups, visualizing the main features of their faces.

Finland AD 5th-8th c.

Sadly, no information will be shared on the session A 1400-year transect of ancient DNA reveals recent genetic changes in the Finnish population, by Salmela et al. We will have to stick to the abstract:

Objectives: Our objective was to use aDNA to study the population history of Finland. For this aim, we sampled and sequenced 35 individuals from ten archaeological sites across southern Finland, representing a time transect from 5th to 18th century.

Methods: Following genomic DNA extraction and preparation of indexed libraries, the samples were enriched for 1,2 million genomewide SNPs using in-solution capture and sequenced on an Illumina HighSeq 4000 instrument. The sequence data were then compared to other ancient populations as well as modern Finns, their geographical neighbors and worldwide populations. Authenticity testing of the data as well as population history inference were based on standard computational methods for aDNA, such as principal component analysis and F statistics.

Results: Despite the relatively limited temporal depth of our sample set, we are able to see major genetic changes in the area, from the earliest sampled individuals – who closely resemble the present-day Saami population residing markedly further north – to the more recent ancient individuals who show increased affinity to the neighboring Circum-Baltic populations. Furthermore, the transition to the present-day population seems to involve yet another perturbation of the gene pool.

So, most likely then, in my opinion – although possibly Y-DNA will not be reported – Finns were in the Classical Antiquity period mostly R1a with secondary N1c in the Circum-Baltic region (similar to modern Estonians, as I wrote recently), while Saami were probably mostly a mix of R1a-Z282 and I1 in southern Finland. That’s what the first transition after the 5th c. probably reflects, the spread of Finns (with mainly N1c lineages) to the north, while the more recent transition shows probably the introduction of North Germanic ancestry (and thus also R1b-U106, R1a-Z284, and I1 lineages) in the west.

Dairying in ancient Mongolia

The History of Dairying in ancient Mongolia, by Wilkin et al.

The use of mass spectrometry based proteomics presents a novel method for investigating human dietary intake and subsistence strategies from archaeological materials. Studies of ancient proteins extracted from dental calculus, as well as other archaeological material, have robustly identified both animal and plant-based dietary components. Here we present a recent case study using shotgun proteomics to explore the range and diversity of dairying in the ancient eastern Eurasian steppe. Contemporary and prehistoric Mongolian populations are highly mobile and the ephemerality of temporarily occupied sites, combined with the severe wind deflation common across the steppes, means detecting evidence of subsistence can be challenging. To examine the time depth and geographic range of dairy use in Mongolia, proteins were extracted from ancient dental calculus from 32 individuals spanning burial sites across the country between the Neolithic and Mongol Empire. Our results provide direct evidence of early ruminant milk consumption across multiple time periods, as well as a dramatic increase in the consumption of horse milk in the late Bronze Age. These data provide evidence that dairy foods from multiple species were a key part of subsistence strategies in prehistoric Mongolia and add to our understanding of the importance of early pastoralism across the steppe.

The confirmation of the date 3000-2700 BC for dairying in the eastern steppe further supports what was already known thanks to archaeological remains, that the pastoralist subsistence economy was brought for the first time to the Altai region by expanding late Khvalynsk/Repin – Early Yamna pastoralists that gave rise to the Afanasevo culture.

Neolithic transition in Northeast Asia

Genomic insight into the Neolithic transition peopling of Northeast Asia, by C. Ning

East Asian representing a large geographic region where around one fifth of the world populations live, has been an interesting place for population genetic studies. In contrast to Western Eurasia, East Asia has so far received little attention despite agriculture here evolved differently from elsewhere around the globe. To date, only very limited genomic studies from East Asia had been published, the genetic history of East Asia is still largely unknown. In this study, we shotgun sequenced six hunter-gatherer individuals from Houtaomuga site in Jilin, Northeast China, dated from 12000 to 2300 BP and, 3 farming individuals from Banlashan site in Liaoning, Northeast China, dated around 5300 BP. We find a high level of genetic continuity within northeast Asia Amur River Basin as far back to 12000 BP, a region where populations are speaking Tungusic languages. We also find our Compared with Houtaomuga hunter-gatherers, the Neolithic farming population harbors a larger proportion of ancestry from Houtaomuga related hunter-gathers as well as genetic ancestry from central or perhaps southern China. Our finding further suggests that the introduction of farming technology into Northeast Asia was probably introduced through demic diffusion.

Y-DNA in Northeast Asia shows thus haplogroup N1b1 ~5000 BC, probably representative of the Baikal region, with a change to C2b-448del lineages before the Xiongnu period, which were later expanded by Mongols.

On the bad aspect, they keep repeating the same “steppe ancestry” meme (in the featured image above, or the one below). I know this is the news report (i.e. science communication), not exactly the Reich Lab, but these maps didn’t appear out of the blue.

Steppe ancestry distribution in Europe, according to PBS.

Interesting for future interpretations is the whiteboard behind David Reich’s back (apparently they like to keep relevant information on whiteboards…):

I don’t know why university labs need to do this: To select the linguistic model preferred by a single archaeologist, which happens to be the lead archaeologist of the group, and then try to make genetic data agree again and again with that model. I guess it is a strategic question, and has to do with granting continued contacts with archaeological sites, and access to samples from them?

I understand none of them will try to learn ancient languages, too much work probably. But, wouldn’t it have been more scientifish, at least, to depart from, say, three or four reasonable potential linguistic models (that is, from Indo-Europeanists), and from there discuss the best potential fits for the current genomic data in each paper?

NOTE. I would say the mainstream German school follows Meid’s (1975) three-stage theory coupled with Dunkel’s (e.g. 1997) nomenclature. The Spanish school follows Adrados, who has repeated ad nauseam that he was the first to mention the three-stage theory in conferences and papers previous to and coincident with Meid’s proposal (see his latest JIES article, a paper available in Scribd). In any case, Spanish and German scholars have been working hand in hand in accepting and developing a general linguistic model similar to the one above.

The French school is non-existent on the homeland matter, Italian scholars seem to be behind even in the description of Anatolian as archaic (probably related to the general wish to have Latin as derived from Vergil’s Troy), Russian scholars are still working with Nostratic and Mesolithic expansions, and Leiden, as the leading IE publisher worldwide today, is full of very different ‘divos’, each with his own pet theory (some obviously agreeing with the German/Spanish model; and especially interesting is that some of them are strong supporters of an Indo-Uralic proto-language).

The English-speaking world, on the other hand, has seen the most varied models being either proposed or translated into its language, with the most popular ones being those publicized by archaeologists (Winfred P. Lehmann being one of the noteworthy exceptions), which may explain why for some people (archaeologists or geneticists) linguistics seems more like a game. It is to be assumed that these same people haven’t taken a look at the dozens of genetic papers published to date – and hundreds of archaeological papers using a bit of linguistics to support their models – , and how wrong they have all been in their interpretations, or else they would realize that genomics does (sadly) not really look like a serious discipline at all right now among most linguists, and among many archaeologists either…

Thus, instead of comparing the main theories on Proto-Indo-European (i.e. linguistics->archaeology->genetics), which would have offered the most stable framework to assess potential prehistoric ethnolinguistic identifications, they keep using a single, simplistic language tree liked by an archaeologist, and trying to fit genetic data to it, while also adapting archaeology to genetics, i.e. genetics->archaeology->linguistics; which, as you can imagine, is not going to convince any linguist.

Especially disappointing is that the world’s leading genetic lab still relies on a marginal proposal based on glottochronology, the homeopathy of linguistics… At least in that regard everyone should know better by now.

Also, they keep interacting with the wrong audience: instead of trying to engage linguists into the real homeland and dialectal quest, to keep Genomics a serious discipline among academics, they tend to discuss with politically- or racially-motivated people, which is probably also in line with strategic decisions.

In the example below, we see the main author of their recent paper on Indo-Iranian migrations seeking once again interaction, this time through “news” promoted by Hindu nationalist bigots, so that – even if that makes them look more neutral in the eyes of those who may allow access to Indian samples – , in the end, we see in genomics a fictitious revival of the “AIT vs. OIT debate” dead long ago in linguistics and archaeology (anywhere but in India).

There has been a lot of news about the discovery of a chariot and the burial of an 'elite warrior' from Sanauli, India recently. Based on the archeological context, and the wheel/chariot vocabulary used as a critical piece of evidence for the spread of Indo European, 1/n pic.twitter.com/KtCvc1iJEY

Pretty disappointing to see these trends; so much effort and time invested in futile discussions and infinitely reworked doomed glottochronological or 19th-century models, when it is the fine-scale population structure of expanding Yamna peoples what we should be discussing now, and thus Late PIE dialectalisation with offshoots Afanasevo, East Bell Beaker, Balkan Bronze Age, and Sintashta/Potapovka; as well as Corded Ware evolution in Uralic-speaking territory.

EDIT (7 JUN 2018): Some parts of the text have been corrected or slightly modified.

1. In the area under discussion, around 4300-4200 BC – a chronological segment marking the evolutionary peak of ‘Old Europe’ (Anthony 2007: 225), represented by the Cucuteni A/ Tripolie BI, Aldeni-Bolgrad, Gumelniţa-Karanovo VI cultures – the first tumular burials appeared (Govedarica 2016: 85). However, flat burials, marked by the existence of some allogeneous elements in the local Eneolithic milieu, were also present. These finds have been linked to the presence (in terms of both trade and conflicts) of Suvorovo/Suvorovo-Novodanilovka communities (Anthony 2007: 251ff.; Govedarica and Manzura 2011: 46ff.; Reingruber and Rassamakin 2016) or of some groups from the ‘western part of the Skelia culture’ (Anthony 2007: 251ff.; Govedarica and Manzura 2011: 46ff.; Reingruber and Rassamakin 2016). (…) The zoomorphic sceptres and the four-knobbed stone mace heads found east of the Prut/the Lower Danube are also related to this topic (Govedarica 2004; Govedarica and Manzura 2011: abb. 5; Gogâltan 2013).

2. The next chronological segment intersects the ‘hiatus’ recorded between the end of the Gumelniţa-Karanovo VI cultural complex and the beginning of the Cernavoda I culture (Rassamakin 2011a: 85ff.; Govedarica and Manzura 2011: 51). We should also mention the existence of a small set of absolute dates ranging within the interval 4200/ 4150 – 3900/ 3850 BC that come from the sites of Sultana, Vităneşti, Pietrele, Bucşani, Ploieşti ‘Triaj’, Ovcarovo, Hotnica etc. (Reingruber 2015; Reingruber and Rassamakin 2016; Frînculeasa 2016; Bem and Haită 2016: 63; Krause et al. 2016). The examples of Sărăteni and Krasnoe15 and the abovementioned dates seem to fill out a part of this chronological segment. It is still difficult to say whether they reflect the presence of some communities that led to the disappearance of the Gumelniţa-Karanovo VI complex or are connected with an early Cernavoda I, or possibly late Suvorovo evolution. If we refer to the absolute dates obtained for samples taken from mammal bones found in Cernavoda I settlements, we notice that the appearance of this culture in the abovementioned chronological interval is not yet confirmed (Frînculeasa 2016, tab. 3).

3. The Cernavoda I discoveries (approximately 3850/3800 – 3550/3500 BC) are represented in the Lower Danube by settlements and flat graves (the presence of tumular burials should not be completely excluded, see Brăiliţa). In the Bugeac area, the Cernavoda I culture was until recently defined only by tumular burials (Manzura 1999). The presence at Orlovka of flat graves and of a settlement (with two habitation levels, in which the Cucuteni B painted pottery occurs in association with the unpainted pottery with crushed shells into the paste) (Govedarica and Manzura 2015; Manzura 2018) shows that we are dealing with the same cultural phenomenon both west and east of the Prut, beyond the so-called ‘Bessarabian version’. North of the Danube there are flat burials, with individuals in side-crouched position. Unlike the tumular graves (including the early ones), in the flat graves there are no ornaments, only (unpainted) pottery items, including at Orlovka cemetery.

Map of funerary finds with skeletons in extended position from the 4th millennium BC andcontemporaneous cultural areas.

Therefore, the presence of tumular graves east of the Prut, in the same chronological interval, may be related to phenomena located east of the Dniester. In fact, Y. Rassamakin associates these finds with the Lower Mikhailovka culture, which precedes here the ritual that is specific to Kvityana communities (Rassamakin 1994: 42, 44; 1999: 92). He establishes a chronological relation between a number of findings such as the plastic anthropomorphic representations from Cernavoda, Râmnicelu, Târpeşti, Folteşti and Satu Nou (Neagu et al. 1982) and Dereivka (Rassamakin 1994: 41; 1999: 90), which seems to point to a revival of contacts between the North Pontic area and the Lower Danube, contacts which had been interrupted with the dissolution of the Gumelniţa-Karanovo VI cultural complex (Reingruber and Rassamakin 2016).

4. At the middle of the 4th millennium BC (we do not exclude that it could reach the end of the chronological interval in which the Cernavoda I culture evolves), we can establish the occurrence (in secondary position) in tumuli – located in the Prut-Dniester interfluve – of graves with deceased laid in extended position. It is a period in which the Kvityana funeral traditions transcend their place of origin. The painted pottery culture provides evidence for, indirectly or directly through the presence of vessels in graves, including east of the Dniester (Rassamakin 2011b; 2013a), the contact and the chronological relationship. Placing the constructions with rings later towards the last third of the 4th millennium BC is supported by the Usatovo finds (Tripolie CII) which are posterior to the Cernavoda I ones (Govedarica and Manzura 2011). The relationship and direct chronological relation between the Kvityana and the (early) Usatovo is also supported by the discovery of Sadovoe (Maljukevich and Petrenko 1993: fig. 5/2). (…)

5. Another horizon with burials of individuals in supine position is stratigraphically recorded between Zhivotilovka and Yamnaya (the last third of the 4th millennium BC); however, a coexistence of both cultural/ funerary groups with specific ritual elements (side-crouched and supinely with knees folded and raised) is not excluded either. The absence of inventory and of ochre and the presence of oval-elongated pits are specific elements.

6. (…) The extended position disappeared in the Early Bronze Age/ 3rd millennium BC (Rassamakin 2013a: 116), but is to be found again in the Katacombnaya ritual (Frînculeasa et al. 2017a). Ascertaining the many discrepancies regarding the contexts and radiocarbon dates, we maintain our reservations on this matter as well. Therefore, the two samples do not represent a solid basis for a possible discussion

From the conclusions:

If the Kvityana evolution covers a significant part of the first half of the 4th millennium BC, and partially the second half, west of the Prut we are dealing with Cernavoda I and later Usatovo communities in the same chronological time frame. The relationship between this ritual/ Kvityana and the Cernavoda I culture, which is stratigraphically unclear, and the absence of items to prove direct contacts show a slight chronological gap in favour of the Cernavoda I culture and the side-crouched ritual, at least in the Prut-Dniester interfluve. This ritual continues to be present, crosses the evolution of Zhivotilovka communities and continues as far as the start of the Yamnaya. The extended position is a late occurrence within the tumular burials in the Lower Danube, but here it is also a rather discreet ritual, one that seems to be of secondary importance. The presence of this ritual (and the accurate interpretation of stratigraphic situations) is an additional element for establishing a better chronological and chorological relationship between the West Pontic area and realities located in the North Pontic steppe, amidst a phenomenon which seems to have rewritten history in other parameters, initially of the Lower Danube and then of Western Europe.

If someone was still relying on Gimbutas – and mostly anything before the 2000s, like “kurgans”, in general terms – to assess cultural developments, and particularly ethnolinguistic identifications, it is time to let it go. The situation in the North Pontic area reveals itself far more complex with each new assessment of recent findings and radiocarbon dates.

Therefore, earlier PIE stages are the most likely objects of controversy for the future. Just like proponents of the Anatolian and Armenian homeland theories have surreptitiously shifted their proposal of “farmers expanding LPIE languages” to “farmers expanding earlier PIE stages”, we will see many different accounts of how late Khvalynsk/Repin came to be, and especially of what new culture now represents Middle PIE, be it early Sredni Stog, Northern Iran, or the Lower Danube.

I am not a priori radically opposed to any of those territories as potential earlier ‘original’ (i.e. Early PIE) homelands, although none of them is a likely Middle PIE Urheimat. The fact that such renewed proposals seem to be mostly based on haplogroups or ancestral components mixed into newly formed pet theories, instead of sound linguistic and archaeological models of cultural continuity (following late Khvalynsk/Repin backwards to their most likely forming cultures) does not help their cause.

Most likely Pre-Proto-Anatolian migration with Suvorovo-Novodanilovka chiefs in the North Pontic steppe and the Balkans.

I am certainly not opposed to a strong influence on the formation of a Middle PIE-speaking community (in terms of Y-DNA lineages and potentially language, since genomics cannot change our knowledge of prehistoric cultures) due to immigrants from the Caucasus. After all:

There seems to be a Northern Caucasian (phonetic) substrate in Middle PIE compared to Uralic;

Nevertheless, even in this case of an obvious migration (e.g. by R1b-M269 lineages) from the Caucasus, we could be talking about a Caucasian group influencing the formation of a Middle PIE community, represented by Khvalynsk, i.e. not necessarily about a Maykop-Khvalynsk community.

That is, peoples from the Caucasus could have admixed with the (already diverse) North Caspian steppe community to form the Middle PIE-speaking peoples whose expansion developed both known dialectal splits:

The Lower Danube remains thus the most important region to investigate, looking for traces of a Proto-Anatolian migration out of the steppe. Today this route seems more likely than Gimbutas’ original idea of Maykop representing a steppe offshoot, since the culture and thus its contacts with the steppe are older than she expected, Anatolian is dated earlier than she could have known based on the works available then, and even the latest available language guesstimates and radiocarbon dates don’t fit quite right in light of the known cultural contacts.

Until some proof appears of a different origin than what archaeologists have described to date, we need more than a simple one-paragraph informal pet theory to change the mainstream model.

A) Given that data from Mesolithic and Eneolithic Pontic-Caspian steppe shows a mixed population in terms of haplogroups, and R1b-M269 lineages are still nowhere to be seen – in the three samples from the Samara region of the Khvalynsk culture -, I can still only guess that it is precisely the expansion of Middle PIE (Pre-Proto-Anatolian and Pre-LPIE) the event associated with the expansion of chiefs of R1b-M269 lineages, especially R1b-L23 subclades, and the general reduction in haplogroup variability, as is obviously seen later in Yamna.

B) If this haplogroup is found first in the Caucasus, and then in Maykop and Khvalynsk during and after their known contacts, though, instead of in Suvorovo-Novodanilovka chiefs, then the question may be settled as Reich recently proposed, and we may have to revise the language split (or, rather, the loss of contact between both MPIE dialects) to a slightly later date.

C.1.) any lineage up to that point with steppe ancestry (including the R1b-V88 sample found in Varna, the same lineage apparently found in a likely early chief from Samara) could be the smoking gun of a potential Proto-Anatolian community spreading through the Balkans.

C.2) Alternatively, if it’s the Caucasus or Northern Iran the origin of Middle PIE formation, then any haplogroup or admixture from Maykop to Anatolia could represent Proto-Anatolians…

We just need more samples near the steppe in time and space to depict a clearer genetic image.

EDIT 28-29 APR 2018: Changes made to the text, including the possibility of a Maykop route.

Featured image: Distribution of burial sites of the Zhivotilovka type.

It explores one of the main issues we are observing with ancient DNA, the greater reduction in Y-DNA lineages relative to mtDNA lineages, and its most likely explanation (which I discussed recently).

Excerpts interesting for the Indo-European question (emphasis mine):

Gimbutas’s reconstruction has been criticized as fantastical by her critics, and any attempt to paint a vivid picture of what a human culture was like before the period of written texts needs to be viewed with caution. Nevertheless, ancient DNA data has provided evidence that the Yamnaya were indeed a society in which power was concentrated among a small number of elite males. The Y chromosomes that the Yamnaya carried were nearly all of a few types, which shows that a limited number of males must have been extraordinarily successful in spreading their genes. In contrast, in their mitochondrial DNA, the Yamnaya had more diverse sequences.9 The descendants of the Yamnaya or their close relatives spread their Y chromosomes into Europe and India, and the demographic impact of this expansion was profound, as the Y-chromosome types they carried were absent in Europe and India before the Bronze Age but are predominant in both places today.13

This Yamnaya expansion also cannot have been entirely friendly, as is clear from the fact that the proportion of Y chromosomes of steppe origin in both western Europe14 and in India15 today is much larger than the proportion of the rest of the genome. This preponderance of male ancestry coming from the steppe implies that male descendants of the Yamnaya with political or social power were more successful at competing for local mates than men from the local groups. The most striking example I know is from Iberia in far southwestern Europe, where Yamnaya-derived ancestry arrived suddenly at the onset of the Bronze Age between 4,500 and 4,000 years ago. Daniel Bradley’s laboratory and my laboratory independently produced ancient DNA from individuals of this period.14 We find that in the first Iberians with Yamnaya-derived ancestry, the proportion of Yamnaya ancestry across the whole genome is almost never more than around 15 percent. However, around 90 percent of males who carry Yamnaya ancestry have a Y-chromosome type of steppe origin that was absent in Iberia prior to that time. It is clear that there were extraordinary hierarchies and imbalances in power at work in the Yamnaya expansions.

David Reich clearly doesn’t give a damn about how other people might react to his commentaries. That’s nice.

In any case, if anyone was still in denial, R1b-M269 expanded with Yamna (through the Bell Beaker expansion) into Iberia, hence yes, 90% of modern Basque male lineages have an origin in the steppe, like the R1b-DF27 sample recently found, and their common ancestor spoke Late Proto-Indo-European.

In duelling 2015 Nature papers6,7, the teams arrived at broadly similar conclusions: an influx of herders from the grassland steppes of present-day Russia and Ukraine — linked to Yamnaya cultural artefacts and practices such as pit burial mounds — had replaced much of the gene pool of central and Western Europe around 4,500–5,000 years ago. This was coincident with the disappearance of Neolithic pottery, burial styles and other cultural expressions and the emergence of Corded Ware cultural artefacts, which are distributed throughout northern and central Europe. “These results were a shock to the archaeological community,” Kristiansen says.

(…)

Still, not everyone was satisfied. In an essay8 titled ‘Kossinna’s Smile’, archaeologist Volker Heyd at the University of Bristol, UK, disagreed, not with the conclusion that people moved west from the steppe, but with how their genetic signatures were conflated with complex cultural expressions. Corded Ware and Yamnaya burials are more different than they are similar, and there is evidence of cultural exchange, at least, between the Russian steppe and regions west that predate Yamnaya culture, he says. None of these facts negates the conclusions of the genetics papers, but they underscore the insufficiency of the articles in addressing the questions that archaeologists are interested in, he argued. “While I have no doubt they are basically right, it is the complexity of the past that is not reflected,” Heyd wrote, before issuing a call to arms. “Instead of letting geneticists determine the agenda and set the message, we should teach them about complexity in past human actions.”

Many archaeologists are also trying to understand and engage with the inconvenient findings from genetics. (…)
[Carlin:] “I would characterize a lot of these papers as ‘map and describe’. They’re looking at the movement of genetic signatures, but in terms of how or why that’s happening, those things aren’t being explored,” says Carlin, who is no longer disturbed by the disconnect. “I am increasingly reconciling myself to the view that archaeology and ancient DNA are telling different stories.” The changes in cultural and social practices that he studies might coincide with the population shifts that Reich and his team are uncovering, but they don’t necessarily have to. And such biological insights will never fully explain the human experiences captured in the archaeological record.

Reich agrees that his field is in a “map-making phase”, and that genetics is only sketching out the rough contours of the past. Sweeping conclusions, such as those put forth in the 2015 steppe migration papers, will give way to regionally focused studies with more subtlety.

This is already starting to happen. Although the Bell Beaker study found a profound shift in the genetic make-up of Britain, it rejected the notion that the cultural phenomenon was associated with a single population. In Iberia, individuals buried with Bell Beaker goods were closely related to earlier local populations and shared little ancestry with Beaker-associated individuals from northern Europe (who were related to steppe groups such as the Yamnaya). The pots did the moving, not the people.

This final paragraph apparently sums up a view that Reich has of this field, since he repeats it:

Reich concedes that his field hasn’t always handled the past with the nuance or accuracy that archaeologists and historians would like. But he hopes they will eventually be swayed by the insights his field can bring. “We’re barbarians coming late to the study of the human past,” Reich says. “But it’s dangerous to ignore barbarians.”

I would say that the true barbarians didn’t have a habit or possibility to learn from the higher civilizations they attacked or invaded. Geneticists, on the other hand, only have to do what they expect archaeologists to do: study.

On the efficiency of the Reich Lab

Zhang: How much does it cost to process an ancient DNA sample right now?

Reich: In our hands, a successful sample costs less than $200. That’s only two or three times more than processing them on a present-day person. And maybe about one-third to one half of the samples we screen are successful at this point.

This is probably the most controversial assessment for the Twitterverse, since it puts the Reich Lab at the top of the publishing chain, but I don’t find this fact controversial; at all.

I don't understand why making something "industrial" in this context is something to brag about really. It upsets me. Without ethical, social, and historical considerations "industrial aDNA research" can be disenfranchising and irrespecutful for some countries/communities. https://t.co/DOIVYJHb3I

Anyone interested in doing genetic studies has free datasets, papers, and bioinformatic tools at hand – thanks to his lab, mostly – to develop new methods and publish papers. Such secondary works won’t probably be published in journals with the highest impact factor, but what can you do, welcome to the scientific world…

Also, by the looks of it, every single researcher involved in recovering an archaeological sample is included as co-author of the papers, so there is a clear benefit for ‘local’ researchers collaborating with the Lab. Therefore, these researchers and their institutions are responsible for whatever unfair situation might be created by their exchange.

On Archaeology’s reaction to Kossinna and Nazi ideas:

(…)Zhang: You actually had German collaborators drop out of a study because of these exact concerns, right? One of them wrote, “We must(!) avoid … being compared with the so-called ‘siedlungsarchäologie Method’ from Gustaf Kossinna!”

Reich: Yeah, that’s right. I think one of the things the ancient DNA is showing is actually the Corded Ware culture does correspond coherently to a group of people. I think that was a very sensitive issue to some of our coauthors, and one of the coauthors resigned because he felt we were returning to that idea of migration in archaeology that pots are the same as people. There have been a fair number of other coauthors from different parts of continental Europe who shared this anxiety.

We responded to this by adding a lot of content to our papers to discuss these issues and contextualize them. Our results are actually almost diametrically opposite from what Kossina thought because these Corded Ware people come from the East, a place that Kossina would have despised as a source for them. But nevertheless it is true that there’s big population movements, and so I think what the DNA is doing is it’s forcing the hand of this discussion in archaeology, showing that in fact, major movements of people do occur. They are sometimes sharp and dramatic, and they involve large-scale population replacements over a relatively short period of time. We now can see that for the first time.

What the genetics is finding is often outside the range of what the archaeologists are discussing these days.

This is mostly true: Genomics offers a whole new dimension to assess exchanges among groups, and help thus select anthropological models of cultural diffusion. They offer another way of interpreting prehistoric cultural evolution and change, including the investigation of potential languages of these cultures, ways of change and replacement, etc.

Also, he acknowledges that there is a lot of content added to the papers in search for context – and thus avoid simplistic assumptions and conclusions – , so this is a reasonable way to look at the (often erroneous) cultural and linguistic context which accompany most genetic papers, and even the new methods being developed to assess samples.

On the other hand, the fact that many in Archaeology didn’t want to discuss migrations does not mean that it was not discussed at all, as he seems to suggest.

On how Genomics fits with traditional disciplines

Zhang: I think at one point in your book you actually describe ancient DNA researchers as the “barbarians” at the gates of the study of history.

Reich: Yeah.

Zhang: Does it feel that way? Have you gotten into arguments with archaeologists over your findings?

Reich: I think archaeologists and linguists find it frustrating that we’re not trained in the language of archaeology and all these sensitivities like about Kossinna. Yet we have this really powerful tool which is this way of looking at things nobody has been able to look at before.

The point I was trying to make there was that even if we’re not always able to articulate the context of our findings very well, this is very new information, and a serious scholar really needs to take this on board. It’s dangerous. Barbarians may not talk in an educated and learned way but they have access to weapons and ways of looking at things that other people haven’t looked to. And time and again we’ve learned in the past that ignoring barbarians is a dangerous thing to do.

I think this is also mostly true: many academics find it frustrating to read these papers, most of which lack a minimal understanding of the topics being discussed.

For example, you can’t pretend to derive meaningful conclusions about Proto-Indo-Europeans knowing nothing about their language and the potential cultures associated with them (and why they were associated with them in the first place)…

I also agree with him in that the study of ancient DNA is a very powerful tool. Everyone involved in Anthropology and Archaeology should be trained these days in Genomics – or, at least, they should have the opportunity to do so.

On the dangers of Genomics

Reich: (…) I know there are extremists who are interested in genealogy and genetics. But I think those are very marginal people, and there’s, of course, a concern they may impinge on the mainstream.

But if you actually take any serious look at this data, it just confounds every stereotype. It’s revealing that the differences among populations we see today are actually only a few thousand years old at most and that everybody is mixed. I think that if you pay any attention to this world, and have any degree of seriousness, then you can’t come out feeling affirmed in the racist view of the world. You have to be more open to immigration. You have to be more open to the mixing of different peoples. That’s your own history.

I guess David Reich does not frequent forums on human genetics linked to ethnolinguistic identification, or he would not think of ‘extremists’ as marginal people. Or else we have a different view of what defines an ‘extremist’…

Conclusion

I did not have the best of opinions about David Reich – or any other geneticist involved in publishing anthropological theories, for that matter. I have always had great respect for their scientific work, though.

If anything, this article shows that he knows his own (and his fellow geneticists’) limitations, and the dangers and limitations of Genomics as a whole, so I have more respect for him – and anyone involved with his Lab’s work – after reading this piece.

After buying Lalueza-Fox’s recent book ‘La forja genètica d’Europa’, I don’t really feel like buying another book on Genomics and migrations from a geneticist. If you have read Reich’s book, please share your impressions.

Sometimes it is fun to read certain “old” papers. I have recently re-read some important papers that predicted what we are seeing now in aDNA analysis with surprising accuracy:

– Harrison & Heyd (2007): “We predict that future stable isotope and ancientDNA analyses of Beaker skeletal material will support our view that immigration played an important role in the Europe-wide Bell Beaker phenomenon”. – Duh, obvious, right? Wrong. Read the whole paper. It was already becoming a classic in the study of the Bell Beaker culture before the latest research on Bell Beaker aDNA, and it will be still more important from now on. There are different models for the Bell Beaker origin and expansion, and this was only one of them: we had the Dutch model, the radiocarbon date-based attempts to locate Bell Beakers in Iberia or North Africa,… I tried to highlight the best sentences from Heyd’s article to include them in my article, and I just couldn’t stop highlighting almost everything. It is surprising that 10 years ago Volker Heyd was predicting so much from such a limited amount of material, and with conflicting reports coming from everywhere, from palaeogenetics to radiocarbon dating. Not that today their chronology of Le Petit – Chasseur is accepted by all, but their general Bell Beaker and Yamna model has been clearly established as the most likely one with support from aDNA.

– Mallory in Celtic from the West 2 (2013), as the last of many to propose Bell Beaker as the vector of spread of Late Indo-European languages, but the first to relate it to North-West Indo-European: “The spread of Indo-European languages from Alpine Europe may have begun with the Beaker culture, presuming here a non-Iberian Beaker homeland (Rhineland, Central European) for that part of the Beaker phenomenon that was associated with an Indo-European language. While it is possible that IE language(s) spread with the Beaker phenomenon, it is questionable that this was associated with Proto-Celtic rather than earlier forms of Late Indo-European, at least part of which might be subsumed under the heading NW Indo-European. This is because the time depth of the dispersal of the Beakers is so great and the earliest attested Celtic languages are so similar (…)”. You might think that it is related to the Atlantic Indo-European theory favoured by Cunnliffe and Koch in the book… Wrong, he specifically dismisses a Neolithic spread of Indo-European, and a Calcholithic spread of Celtic languages as too early. You might also think that to publish that in 2013 has no merit, given the data. Wrong again. Just look at the trend among renown archaeologists – like Anthony (with Haak) and Kristiansen (with Allentoft) – trying to hop on the bandwagon of Corded Ware-driven Indo-European dispersal based on the “steppe admixture” proportion of recent genetic papers, and you realize he is going against the grain here.

– Prescott and Walderhaug 1995 (as referred to in Prescott 2012): “The Bell Beaker period is the most, perhaps the only, reasonable candidate for the spread and final entrenchment of a common Indo-European language throughout Scandinavia (and not just Corded Ware core areas of southern and eastern Scandinavia), and particularly Norway”. Duh again? Not so fast. While Bell Beaker had been proposed before as a vector of Indo-European languages in Europe, the association with Germanic was far more controversial. Only the unifying Dagger Period was more clearly established as of Pre-Germanic nature, but it could be interpreted as of Corded Ware, Úněticean, or even early Neolithic origin, or a mix of them. Bell Beaker groups were never good candidates, if only because of the desire by some researchers to offer a romanticized (either more unifying or ancient) picture of a Germanic Northern Scandinavian homeland, explained as a culturally and genetically homogeneous group.

Their papers seem to state the obvious now that the latest aDNA samples are proving them correct, but it was far from clear years ago: remember the native European Basque-R1b – Uralic-N1c harmony disrupted by invasive Eurasian Indo-European-speaking warriors carrying R1a lineages from Yamna to Corded Ware? Well that is still a thing for some. And even today the most popular interpretation of the spread of Indo-European-speakers in Europe is based on the defined “steppe ancestry” proportion found in Corded Ware individuals, and a supposedly Yamna community formed by R1b-R1a lineages, which is obviously reminiscent of the identification of R1a lineages with Proto-Indo-Europeans based on the initial analysis of haplogroups in modern populations.

It is sad to imagine how much we would have improved in our knowledge, had we read their work with interest when it was necessary, and not now that we have most of the aDNA clues. Still sadder is to see people rely on genetic studies alone to derive today what are likely the wrong conclusions. Again.

I will end with a mea culpa. I hadn’t read those works; but even if I had, I would have stayed with the simpler, R1a-Corded Ware model of Indo-European dispersion. That oversimplification will remain in the different editions of our Grammar of Modern Indo-European as a permanent reminder. Simpler seems always better, and Cavalli-Sforza had famously asserted that ancient population movements could be solved with the study of the structure of modern populations. I think he was right, that we can in fact ascertain ancient population movements by studying modern populations if we include anthropological disciplines, but it is such a complex task – and geneticists have not shown a good grasp in (or interest for) Anthropology -, that it is nowadays clearly wrong to rely on modern population samples to derive conclusions about ancient populations, and we are better off studying ancient DNA samples in their context.

We were Back-to-the-Future-wrong, overestimating our potential in some aspects – like the results of researching modern DNA -, and underestimating it in others – like the potential changes that ancient DNA investigation could bring for anthropological disciplines. Just as we are wrong today in trusting the potential of admixture analysis to be self-explanatory, without a need for wide anthropological investigation (or even able to revolutionize archaeological and linguistic theories).

I hope to keep a more critical view of publications – especially the most popular ones – from now on.

I certainly agree with some of your points so I'll focus on a few areas of slight or major disagreement or difference in interpretation:Mind, I've been generally paying more attention to autosomal DNA than Y-DNA except when I find the former totally unable to differentiate between two close scenarios but I mentioned it in particular […]

Me: "I don't think many academics interested in dialectal classification would have agreed with that before genetics, either."I'm wrong, there were many groupings like that, especially for those using phonetic comparisons of a few words. Even Anthony used something similar, from Ringe et al. (2002) https://doi.org/10.1111/146...https://uploads.disquscdn.c...The book The Indo-European Controversy is full of such examples.I […]

I cannot fully disagree with the model you mention (it's possible), and I don't think Koch's ideas are outrageous either, just in line with his (probably wrong) views about Celtic from the West.The problem with Koch is he believes Celtic was very very early, so yes he may have found a (mainly) Y-DNA way to […]

There is a slight problem with a late entry of Celtic into Ireland too to be sure, at least if you focus on Y-DNA. Non-L21 R1b seems to be relatively uncommon, though not non-existent. I can't begrudge Koch having a preference for a scenario he always argued for in light of this kind of data. […]

As I posted above, Bil-Ga-Mes has meaning in Sumerian very different from Baala Ganesha.I would like to correct the spelling of Homer in Greek, it is Ομηρος (Home:ros) long E. Since English does not have a long E, it appears Homer is similar to Horem, which it is not.Also, which priest Horem are you taking […]

Thank you, I had these corrected in the latest text, I think. Maybe the maps are behind.The use of old and recent ISOGG nomenclature in papers from different labs is especially annoying with haplogroup Q, where different labs use "Q1a2" to say either L56 (which is now under Q1b, by the way) or M25..

I did not "change" Gilgamesh to Bilgames(h): the oldest known text of this tale used Bilgames, so fortunately, I am not incorrect.I am unclear where I stated Bilgames (the oldest known form of his name) originated anywhere. I stated I had a theory after I read a release about "missing text" from the epic where […]

All very interesting but unfortunately, linguistic cognates do not work like that - changing letters randomly (Gilgamesh to Balganesh). Or Homer (Homeros in Greek) to Horem (Pharaoh Horemheb). Using similar random similarities, there was a big noise in South Indian papers about 10-15 years ago about how the tribal language Tulu had words similar to […]